Private Investors Can Help End Poverty. They Just Need to Think Small and Local.

More than a locality’s wealth, tax policies, or business environment, infrastructure is what makes the difference. Quality infrastructure — from transportation (airports, transit, heavy rail) to social (education, housing, health care, sanitation) to digital (broadband) — doesn’t only elevate residents’ quality of life, it creates and supports the services that catalyze capital investment and expand the taxpayer base. And in addition to reversing the poverty of today, infrastructure investment has the potential to stave off the poverty of the future — a critical lesson given the prospect that the most economically vulnerable areas of the world could experience a “lost decade” due to the Covid-19 pandemic according to the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report.